I remember being daunted by the sheer amount of vocab' and memorising of declensions and conjugations, when I first started studying Latin. (Back then, universities in Britain used to actually write books - not nowadays, despite the fact that the course fees are several hundred times what they were. One module, for example, used to cost about £200-400 and you would receive a bunch of books, most often written by the university. Nowadays you pay £1,614 and if you're lucky you receive one book only, which is not written by the university. These are the Dark Ages, for certain). Anyway. I was daunted at the task which lay ahead, but an old friend once visited me at home. As I explained to him that I was feeling overawed by it all he replied, "If anyone in this town can master Latin Max, it's you." This gave me two things, for which I am extremely grateful: one, a glimmer of hope in an otherwise jar of evil demons (as Hesiod wrote of Pandora), and two, courage. The courage to carry on and get it bloody well done. I failed, more than once, but although I failed the basic Latin exam, I (eventually) passed the advanced - and much more difficult - Latin exam. Go figure. At our uni' we call this 'bouncebackability'.
In any case, as I read Albert Venn Dicey, also the wide gamut of British history (we only get a brief overview on our current module, but I have read a lot of history - it being my absolute favourite subject), I was, just a moment ago, daunted by the sheer voluminous length of his work, not to mention not yet having gotten into reading Charlie Montesquieu. However, I was reminded of my dear friend, and what he said in my moment of waning. I am also reminded of my commanding officer in the ACF. Major Bennyworth (formerly of the Somerset Light Infantry, then the Devonshire and Dorsetshire Regiment) is a hero of mine. He explained to me, as I was rising the ranks, that the battle is not actually physical. The real battle is of the spirit. Morale is very important indeed (one only needs to look at what's happened in Ukraine and Russia to see evidence of this). Major Bennyworth once said to me, then a young sergeant, "If you think you're beat, then you are beat." One must maintain good morale, have a sense of urgency, switch on, stay on side. It's a state of mind which never leaves you.
Even as a homeless person of fifteen years (a wandering minstrel) there have been many times when my training has saved me. Out there, in the wild, if you are not able to keep your spirits up, you may not even survive, what with sub-zero temperatures in winter or being set upon by dangerous animals (especially wild rams, or abroad: lynxes). Face front. Switch on. Stay on side. Like I said, the attitude never leaves you.
Today I was also daunted by my current commission. This is even trickier than studying law (which is, after all, in English). It took me like a whole hour to translate two measley words, and I am still most uncertain whether I translated them correctly. Even so, one tries one's best.
That... place (Hades, the Infernal Regions) is bareable at the moment, because Bligh is still off searching for breadfruit and the oompa-loompa with the huge gob that cracks under the slightest amount of pressure, throwing things, slamming things down and yelling the entire time is not there. Thank God.
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